A Short History of French Literature, by George Saintsbury

Chapter 2.

Marot and His Contemporaries.

Hybrid School of Poetry.

The beginnings of the Renaissance in France manifest, as we should expect, a mixture of the characteristics of the
later middle ages and of the new learning. In those times the influence of reforms of any kind filtered slowly through
the dense crust of custom which covered the national life of each people, and there is nothing surprising in the fact
that while Italy felt the full influence of the influx of classical culture in the fifteenth century, that influence
should be only partially manifest in France during the first quarter of the sixteenth, while it was not until the
century was more than half over that it showed itself in England. The complete manifestation of the combined tendencies
of mediaeval and neo-pagan thought was only displayed in Shakespeare, but by that time, as is the wont of all such
things, it had already manifested itself partially, though in each part more fully and characteristically, elsewhere.
It is in the literature of France that we find the most complete exposition of these partial developments. Marot,
Ronsard, Rabelais, Calvin, Garnier, Montaigne, will not altogether make up a Shakespeare, yet of the various
ingredients which go to make up the greatest of literary productions each of them had shown, before Shakespeare began
to write, some complete and remarkable embodiment. It is this fact which gives the French literature of the sixteenth
century its especial interest. Italy had almost ceased to be animated by the genius of the middle ages before her
literature became in any way perfect in form, and the survival of the classical spirit was so strong there that
mediaeval influence was never very potent in the moulding of the national letters. England had lost the mediaeval differentia, owing to religious and political causes, before the Renaissance made its way to
her shores. But in France the two currents met, though the earlier had lost most of its force, and, according to the
time-honoured parallel, flowed on long together before they coalesced. In the following chapters we shall trace the
history of this process, and here we shall trace the first stage of it in reference to French poetry. In the period of
which Marot is the representative name, the earlier force was still dominant in externals; in that of which Ronsard is
the exponent, the Greek and Latin element shows itself as, for the moment, all-powerful.

Jean le Maire.

Jehan du Pontalais.

Between the rhétoriqueurs proper, the Chastellains and the Crétins and the Molinets on the one hand, and
Marot and his contemporaries and disciples on the other, a school of poets, considerable at least in numbers,
intervened. The chief of these was Jean le Maire des Belges165.
He was the nephew of Molinet, and his birth at Belges or Bavia in Hainault, as well as his literary ancestry and
predilections, inclined him to the Burgundian, or, as it was now, the Austrian side. But the strong national feeling
which was now beginning to distinguish French-speaking men threw him on the side of the King of Paris, and he was
chiefly occupied in his serious literary work on tasks which were wholly French. His Illustrations des Gaules
is his principal prose work, and in this he displays a remarkable faculty of writing prose at once picturesque and
correct. The titles of his other works (Temple d'Honneur et de Vertu, etc.) still recall the fifteenth
century, and the Latinising tradition of Chartier appears strong in him. But at the same time he Latinises with a due
regard to the genius of the language, and his work, pedantic and conceited as it frequently is, stands in singular
contrast to the work of some of his models. Something not dissimilar, though in this case the rhétoriqueur
influence is less apparent, may be said of Pierre Gringore, whose true title to a place in a history of French literature is, however, derived from his dramatic work, and who will accordingly be mentioned later.
Nor had the tradition of Villon, overlaid though it was by the abundance and popularity of formal and allegorising
poetry, died out in France. At least two remarkable figures, Jehan du Pontalais and Roger de Collérye, represent it in
the first quarter of the century. The former indeed166 owes his
place here rather to a theory than to certain information; for if M. d'Héricault's notion that Jehan du Pontalais is
the author of a work entitled Contreditz du Songecreux be without foundation, Jehan falls back into the number
of half mythical Bohemians, bilkers of tavern bills and successful out-witters of the officers of justice, who possess
a shadowy personality in the literary history of France. Les Contreditz du Songecreux ranks among the most
remarkable examples of the liberty which was accorded to the press under the reign of Louis XII., a king who inherited
some affection for literature from his father, Charles d'Orléans, and a keen perception of the importance of literary
co-operation in political work from his ancestor, Philippe le Bel, and his cousin Louis XI. In precision and
strikingness of expression Jehan recalls Villon; in the boldness of his satire on the great and the bitterness of his
attacks on the character of women he recalls Antoine de la Salle and Coquillart. A trait illustrating the former power
may be found in the line descriptive of the hen-pecked man's condition —

Tous ses cinq sens lui fault retraire.

while his attacks on the nobility are almost up to the level of Burns —

Noblesse enrichie Richesse ennoblie Tiennent leurs estatz,

Qui n'a noble vie Je vous certifie Noble n'est pas.

Roger de Collérye.

Minor Predecessors of Marot.

Roger de Collérye167 was a Burgundian, living at the famous
and vinous town of Auxerre, and he has celebrated his loves, his distress, his amiable tendency to conviviality, in
many rondeaux and other poems, sometimes attaining a very high level of excellence. 'Je suis
Bon-temps, vous le voyez' is the second line of one of his irregular ballades, and the nickname expresses his general
attitude well enough. Mediaeval legacies of allegory, however, supply him with more unpleasant personages, Faute
d'Argent and Plate-Bourse, for his song, and his mistress, Gilleberte de Beaurepaire, appears to have been anything but
continuously kind. Collérye has less perhaps of the rhétoriqueur flavour than any poet of this time before
Marot, and his verse is very frequently remarkable for directness and grace of diction. But like most verse of the kind
it frequently drops into a conventionality less wearisome but not much less definite than that of the mere
allegorisers. Jehan Bouchet168, a lawyer of Poitiers (not to be
confounded with Guillaume Bouchet, author of the Sérées), imitated the rhétoriqueurs for the most
part in form, and surpassed them in length, excelling indeed in this respect even the long-winded and long-lived poets
of the close of the fourteenth century. Bouchet is said to have composed a hundred thousand verses, and even M.
d'Héricault avers that he read two-thirds of the number without discovering more than six quotable lines. Such works of
Bouchet as we have examined fully confirm the statement. Still, he was an authority in his way, and had something of a
reputation. His fanciful nom de plume 'Le Traverseur des Voies Périlleuses' is the most picturesque thing he
produced, and is not uncharacteristic of the later middle age tradition. Rabelais himself, who was a fair critic of
poetry when his friends were not concerned, but who was no poet, and was even strikingly deficient in some of the
characteristics of the poet, admired and emulated Bouchet in heavy verse; and a numerously attended school, hardly any
of the pupils being worth individual mention, gathered round the lawyer. Charles de Bordigné is only remarkable for
having, in his Légende de Pierre Faifeu, united the rhétoriqueur style with a kind of Villonesque or
rather pseudo-Villonesque subject. The title of the chief poems of Symphorien Champier, Le Nef des Dames
Amoureuses, sufficiently indicates his style. But Champier, though by no means a good poet, was a useful and
studious man of letters, and did much to form the literary cénacle which gathered at
Lyons in the second quarter of the century, and which, both in original composition, in translations of the classics,
and in scholarly publication of work both ancient and modern, rendered invaluable service to literature. Gratien du
Pont169 continued the now very stale mediaeval calumnies on women
in his Controverses des Sexes Masculin et Féminin. Eloy d'Amerval, a Picard priest, also fell into mediaeval
lines in his Livre de la Déablerie, in which the personages of Lucifer and Satan are made the mouthpieces of
much social satire. Jean Parmentier, a sailor and a poet, combined his two professions in Les Merveilles de
Dieu, a poem including some powerful verse. A vigorous ballade, with the refrain Car France est Cymetièreaux
Anglois, has preserved the name of Pierre Vachot. But the remaining poets of this time could only find a place in
a very extended literary history. Most of them, in the words of one of their number, took continual lessons ès
œuvres Crétiniques et Bouchetiques, and some of them succeeded at last in imitating the dulness of Bouchet and the
preposterous mannerisms of Crétin. Perhaps no equal period in all early French history produced more and at the same
time worse verse than the reign of Louis XII. Fortunately, however, a true poet, if one of some limitations, took up
the tradition, and showed what it could do. Marot has sometimes been regarded as the father of modern French poetry,
which, unless modern French poetry is limited to La Fontaine and the poets of the eighteenth century, is absolutely
false. He is sometimes regarded as the last of mediaeval poets, which, though truer, is false likewise. What he really
was can be shown without much difficulty.

Clément Marot.

Clément Marot170 was a man of more mixed race than was usual
at this period, when the provincial distinctions were still as a rule maintained with some sharpness. His father, Jean
Marot, a poet of merit, was a Norman, but he emigrated to Quercy, and Marot's mother was a
native of Cahors, a town which, from its Papal connections, as well as its situation on the borders of Gascony, was
specially southern. Clément was born probably at the beginning of 1497, and his father educated him with some pains in
things poetical. This, as times went, necessitated an admiration of Crétin and such like persons, and the practice of
rondeaux, and of other poetry strict in form and allegorical in matter. As it happened, the discipline was a very sound
one for Marot, whose natural bent was far too vigorous and too lithe to be stiffened or stunted by it, while it
unquestionably supplied wholesome limitations which preserved him from mere slovenly facility. It is evident, too, that
he had a sincere and genuine love of things mediaeval, as his devotion to the Roman de la Rose and to Villon's
poems, both of which he edited, sufficiently shows. He 'came into France,' an expression of his own, which shows the
fragmentary condition of the kingdom even at this late period, when he was about ten years old. His father held an
appointment as 'Escripvain' to Anne of Brittany, and accompanied her husband to Genoa in 1507. The University of Paris,
and a short sojourn among the students of law, completed Clément's education, and he then became a page to a nobleman,
thus obtaining a position at court or, at least, the chance of one. It is not known when his earliest attempt at
following the Crétinic lessons was composed; but in 1514, being then but a stripling, he presented his Jugement de
Minos to François de Valois, soon to be king. A translation of the first Eclogue of Virgil had even preceded this.
Both poems are well written and versified, but decidedly in the rhétoriqueur style. In 1519, having already
received or assumed the title of 'Facteur' (poet) to Queen Claude, he became one of the special adherents of Marguerite
d'Angoulême, the famous sister of Francis, from whom, a few years later, we find him in receipt of a pension. He also
occupied some post in the household of her husband, the King of Navarre. In 1524 he went to Italy with Francis, was
wounded and taken prisoner at Pavia, but returned to France the next year. Marguerite's immediate followers were
distinguished, some by their adherence to the principles of the Reformation, others by free thought of a still more unorthodox description, and Marot soon after his return was accused of heresy and lodged in the
Châtelet. He was, however, soon transferred to a place of mitigated restraint, and finally set at liberty. About this
time his father died. In 1528 he obtained a post and a pension in the King's own household. He was again in
difficulties, but again got out of them, and in 1530 he married. But the next year he was once more in danger on the
old charge of heresy, and was again rescued from the chats fourrés by Marguerite. He had already edited the
Roman de la Rose, but no regular edition of his own work had appeared. In 1533 came out not merely his edition
of Villon, but a collection of his own youthful work under the pretty title Adolescence Clémentine. In 1535
the Parliament of Paris for a fourth time molested Marot. Marguerite's influence was now insufficient to protect him,
and the poet fled first to Béarn and then to Ferrara. Here, under the protection of Renée de France, he lived and wrote
for some time, but the persecution again grew hot. He retired to Venice, but in 1539 obtained permission to return to
France. Francis gave him a house in the Faubourg Saint Germain, and here apparently he wrote his famous Psalms, which
had an immense popularity; these the Sorbonne condemned, and Marot once more fled, this time to Geneva. He found this
place an uncomfortable sojourn, and crossed the Alps into Piedmont, where, not long afterwards, he died in 1544.

Marot's work is sufficiently diverse in form, but the classification of it adopted in the convenient edition of
Jannet is perhaps the best, though it neglects chronology. There are some dozen pieces of more or less considerable
length, among which may specially be mentioned Le Temple de Cupido, an early work of rhétoriqueur
character for the most part, in dizains of ten and eight syllables alternately, a Dialogue of two Lovers, an Eclogue to
the King; L'Enfer, a vigorous and picturesque description of his imprisonment in the Châtelet, and some poems
bearing a strong Huguenot impression. Then come sixty-five epistles written in couplets for the most part decasyllabic.
These include the celebrated Coq-à-l'Âne, a sort of nonsense-verse, with a satirical tendency, which derives
from the mediaeval fatrasie, and was very popular and much imitated. Another mediaeval
restoration of Marot's, also very popular and also much imitated, was the blason, a description, in
octosyllables. Twenty-six elegies likewise adopt the couplet, and show, as do the epistles, remarkable power over that
form. Fifteen ballades, twenty-two songs in various metres, eighty-two rondeaux, and forty-two songs for music, contain
much of Marot's most beautiful work. His easy graceful style escaped the chief danger of these artificial forms, the
danger of stiffness and monotony; while he was able to get out of them as much pathos and melody as any other French
poet, except Charles d'Orléans and Villon. Numerous étrennes recall the Xenia of Martial, and funeral
poems of various lengths and styles follow. Then we have nearly three hundred epigrams, many of them excellent in point
and elegance, a certain number of translations, the Psalms, fifty in number, certain prayers, and two versified
renderings of Erasmus' Colloquies.

It will be seen from this enumeration that the majority of Marot's work is what is now called occasional. No single
work of his of a greater length than a few hundred lines exists; and, after his first attempts in the allegorical kind,
almost all his works were either addressed to particular persons, or based upon some event in his life. Marot was
immensely popular in his lifetime; and though after his death a formidable rival arose in Ronsard, the elder poet's
fame was sustained by eager disciples. With the discredit of the Pléiade, in consequence of Malherbe's criticisms,
Marot's popularity returned in full measure, and for two centuries he was the one French poet before the classical
period who was actually read and admired with genuine admiration by others besides professed students of antiquity.
Since the great revival of the taste for older literature, which preceded and accompanied the Romantic movement, Marot
has scarcely held this pride of place. The Pléiade on the one hand, the purely mediaeval writers on the other, have
pushed him from his stool. But sane criticism, which declines to depreciate one thing because it appreciates another,
will always have hearty admiration for his urbanity, his genuine wit, his graceful turn of words; and his flashes of
pathos and poetry.

It is, as has been said, one of the commonplaces of the subject to speak of Marot as the father of modern French
poetry; the phrase is, like all such phrases, inaccurate, but, like most such phrases, it contains a certain amount of
truth. To the characteristics of the lighter French poetry, from La Fontaine to Béranger, which has always been more
popular both at home and abroad than the more ambitious and serious efforts of French poets, Marot does in some sort
stand in a parental relation. He retained the sprightliness and sly fun of the Fabliau-writers, while he softened their
crudity of expression, he exchanged clumsiness and horse-play for the play of wit, and he emphasised fully in the
language the two characteristics which have never failed to distinguish it since, elegance and urbanity. His style is
somewhat pedestrian, though on occasion he can write with exquisite tenderness, and with the most delicate
suggestiveness of expression. But as a rule he does not go deep; ease and grace, not passion or lofty flights, are his
strong points. Representing, as he did, the reaction from the stiff forms and clumsily classical language of the
rhétoriqueurs, it was not likely that he should exhibit the tendency of his own age to classical culture and
imitation very strongly. He and his school were thus regarded by their immediate successors of the Pléiade as rustic
and uncouth singers, for the most part very unjustly. But still Marot's work was of less general and far-reaching
importance than that of Ronsard. He brought out the best aspect of the older French literature, and cleared away some
disfiguring encumbrances from it, but he imported nothing new. It would hardly be unjust to say that, given the
difference of a century in point of ordinary progress, Charles d'Orléans is Marot's equal in elegance and grace, and
his superior in sentiment, while Marot is not comparable to Villon in passion or in humour. His limitation, and at the
same time his great merit, was that he was a typical Frenchman. A famous epigram, applied to another person two
centuries later, might be applied with very little difficulty or alteration to Marot. He had more than anybody else of
his time the literary characteristics which the ordinary literary Frenchman has. We constantly meet in the history of
literature this contrast between the men who are simply shining examples of the ordinary type,
and men who cross and blend that type with new characters and excellences. Unquestionably the latter are the greater,
but the former cannot on any equitable scheme miss their reward. It must be added that the positive merit of much of
Marot's work is great, though, as a rule, his longer pieces are very inferior to his shorter. Many of the epigrams are
admirable; the Psalms, which have been unjustly depreciated of late years by French critics, have a sober and solemn
music, which is almost peculiar to the French devotional poetry of that age; the satirical ballade of Frère
Lubin is among the very best things of its kind; while as much may be said of the rondeaux 'Dedans Paris' in the
lighter style, and 'En la Baisant' in the graver. Perhaps the famous line —

Un doux nenny avec un doux sourire,

supposed to have been addressed to the Queen of Navarre, expresses Marot's poetical powers as well as anything else,
showing as it does grace of language, tender and elegant sentiment, and suppleness, ease, and fluency of style.

The School of Marot.

Marot formed a very considerable school, some of whom directly imitated his mannerisms, and composed
blasons171 and Coq-à-l'Âne in emulation of
their master and of each other, while others contented themselves with displaying the same general characteristics, and
setting the same poetical ideals before them. Among the idlest, but busiest literary quarrels of the century, a century
fertile in such things, was that between Marot and a certain insignificant person named François Sagon, a belated
rhétoriqueur, who found some other rhymers of the same kind to support him. One of Marot's best things, an
answer of which his servant, Fripelipes, is supposed to be the spokesman, came of the quarrel; but of the other
contributions, not merely of the principals, but of their followers, the Marotiques and Sagontiques,
nothing survives in general memory, or deserves to survive. Of Marot's disciples, one, Mellin de Saint Gelais, deserves
separate mention, the others may be despatched in passing. Victor Brodeau, who, like his
master, held places in the courts both of Marguerite and her brother, wrote not merely a devotional work, Les
Louanges de Jésus Christ notre Seigneur, which fairly illustrates the devotional side of the Navarrese literary
coterie, but also epigrams and rondeaux of no small merit. Étienne Dolet, better known both as a scholar and
translator, and as the publisher of Marot and (surreptitiously) of Rabelais, composed towards the end of his life poems
in French, the principal of which was taken in title and idea from Marot's Enfer, and which, though very
unequal, have passages of some poetical power. Marguerite herself has left a considerable collection of poems of the
most diverse kind and merit, the title of which, Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses172, is perhaps not the worst thing about them. Farces, mysteries, religious
poems, such as Le Triomphe de l'Agneau, and Le Miroir de l'Âme Pécheresse, with purely secular pieces
on divers subjects, make up these curious volumes. Not a few of the poems display the same nobility of tone and stately
sonorousness of verse, which has been and will be noticed as a characteristic of the serious poetry of the age, and
which reached its climax in Du Bartas, D'Aubigné, and the choruses of Garnier and Montchrestien. Bonaventure des
Périers, an admirable prose writer, was a poet, though not a very strong one. François Habert, 'Le Banni de Liesse,'
must not be confounded with Philippe Habert, author of a remarkable Temple de la Mort in the next century.
Gilles Corrozet, author of fables in verse, who, like many other literary men of the time, was a printer and publisher
as well, Jacques Gohorry, a pleasant song writer, Gilles d'Aubigny, Jacques Pelletier, Étienne Forcadel, deserve at
least to be named. Of more importance were Hugues Salel, Charles Fontaine, Antoine Héroet, Maurice Scève. All these
were members of the Lyonnese literary coterie, and in connection with this Louise Labé also comes in. Salel, famous as
the first French translator of the Iliad, or rather of Books I-XII thereof, distinguished himself as a writer of
blasons in imitation of Marot, as well as by composing many small poems of the occasional kind. Charles
Fontaine exhibited the fancy of the time for conceits in the entitling of books by denominating his poems Ruisseaux
de la Fontaine, and was one of the chief champions on Marot's side in the quarrel with
Sagon, while he afterwards defended the style Marotique against Du Bellay's announcement of the programme of
the Pléiade. But perhaps he would hardly deserve much remembrance, save for a charming little poem to his new-born son,
which M. Asselineau has made accessible to everybody in Crepet's Poètes Français173. He also figures in a literary tournament very characteristic of the age. La
Borderie, another disciple of Marot, had written a poem entitled L'Amye de Cour, which defended libertinism,
or at least worldly-mindedness in love, in reply to the Parfaite Amye of Antoine Héroet, which exhibits very
well a certain aspect of the half-amorous, half-mystical sentiment of the day. Fontaine rejoined in a Contr'Amye de
Cour. Maurice Scève is also a typical personage. He was, it may be said, the head of the Lyonnese school, and was
esteemed all over France. He was excepted by the irreverent champions of the Pléiade from the general ridicule which
they poured on their predecessors, and was surrounded by a special body of feminine devotees and followers, including
his kinswomen Claudine and Sibylle Scève, Jeanne Gaillarde, and above all Louise Labé. Scève's poetical work is
strongly tinged with classical affectation and Platonic mysticism; and his chief poem, De l'Objet de la plus haute
Vertu, consists of some four hundred and fifty dizains written in what in England and later has been, not very
happily, called a metaphysical style. Last of all comes the just-mentioned Louise Labé, 'La belle Cordière,' one of the
chief ornaments of Lyons, and the most important French poetess of the sixteenth century. Louise was younger, and wrote
later than most of the authors just mentioned, and in some respects she belongs to the school of Ronsard, like her
supposed lover, Olivier de Magny. But the Lyons school was essentially Marotique, and much of the style of the
elder master is observable in the writings of Louise174. She has
left a prose Dialogue d'Amour et de Folie, three elegies, and a certain number of sonnets. Her poems are
perhaps the most genuinely passionate of the time and country, and many of the sonnets are extremely beautiful. The
language is on the whole simple and elegant, without the over-classicism of the Pléiade, or the
obscurity of her master Scève. Strangely enough the poems of this young Lyonnese lady have in many places a singular
approach to the ring of Shakespeare's sonnets and minor works, and that not merely by virtue of the general resemblance
common to all the love poetry of the age, but in some very definite traits. Her surname of 'La belle Cordière' came
from her marriage with a rich merchant, Ennemond Perrin by name, who was by trade a ropemaker. Her poems have had their
full share of the advantages of reprints, which have of late years fallen to the lot of sixteenth-century authors in
France.

Mellin de St. Gelais.

Mellin de Saint Gelais175, the last to be mentioned but the
most important of the school of Marot, has been very variously judged. The mere fact that he was probably the
introducer of the sonnet into France (the counter claim of Pontus de Tyard seems to be unfounded) would suffice to give
him a considerable position in the history of letters. But Mellin's claims by no means rest upon this achievement. He
was a man of higher position than most of the other poets of the time, being the reputed son of Octavien de Saint
Gelais, and himself enjoying a good deal of royal favour. In his old age, as the representative of the school of Marot,
he had to bear the brunt of the Pléiade onslaught, and knew how to defend himself, so that a truce was made. He was
born in 1487, and died in 1558. His name is also spelt Merlin, and even Melusin, the Saint Gelais boasting descent from
the Lusignans, and thus from the famous fairy heroine Mélusine. In his youth he spent a good deal of time in Italy, at
the Universities of Bologna and Padua. On returning to France, he was at once received into favour at court, and having
taken orders, obtained various benefices and appointments which assured his fortune. It is remarkable that though he
violently opposed Ronsard's rising favour at court, both the Prince of Poets and Du Bellay completely forgave him, and
pay him very considerable compliments, the latter praising his 'vers emmiellés,' the former speaking, even after his
death, of his proficiency in the combined arts of music and poetry. Saint Gelais was a good musician, and an affecting
story is told of his swan-song, for which, as for other anecdotes, there is no space here. His
work, though not inconsiderable in volume, is, even more than that of Marot and other poets of the time and school,
composed for the most part of very short pieces, epigrams, rondeaux, dizains, huitains, etc. These pieces display more
merit than most recent critics have been disposed to allow to them. The style is fluent and graceful, free from puns
and other faults of taste common at the time. The epigrams are frequently pointed, and well expressed, and the
complimentary verse is often skilful and well turned. Mellin de Saint Gelais is certainly not a poet of the highest
order, but as a court singer and a skilful master of language he deserves a place among his earlier contemporaries only
second to that of Marot.

Miscellaneous Verse. Anciennes Poésies Françaises.

Something of the same sort may be said of all the writers in verse of the first half of the century. Their
importance is chiefly relative. Few of their works are conceived or executed on a scale sufficient to entitle them to
the rank of great poets, and, saving always Marot, the excellence even of the trifling compositions to which they
confined themselves is very unequal and intermittent. But all are evidences of a general diffusion of the literary
spirit among the people of France, and most of them in their way, and according to their powers, helped in perfecting
the character of French as a literary instrument. The advance which the language experienced in this respect is perhaps
nowhere better shown than in the miscellaneous and popular poetry of the time, a vast collection of which has been made
accessible by the reprinting of rare or unique printed originals in the thirteen volumes of MM. de Montaiglon and de
Rothschild's Anciennes Poésies Françaises, published in the Bibliothèque Elzévirienne176. This flying literature, as it is well called in French, lacks in most
cases the freshness and spontaneity of mediaeval folk-song. But it has in exchange gained in point of subject a wide
extension of range, and in point of form a considerable advance in elegance of language, absence of commonplace, and perfection of literary form and style. The stiffness which characterises much
mediaeval and almost all fifteenth-century work has disappeared in great measure. The writers speak directly and to the
point, and find no difficulty in so using their mother tongue as to express their intentions. The tools in short are
more effective and more completely under the control of the worker. A certain triviality is indeed noticeable, and the
tendency of the middle ages to perpetuate favourite forms and models is by no means got rid of. But much that was
useless has been discarded, and of what is left a defter and more distinctly literary use is made. Had French remained
as Marot left it, it would indeed have been unequal to the expression of the noblest thoughts, the gravest subjects, to
the treatment and exposition of intricate and complicated problems of life and mind. But in his hands it attained
perhaps the perfection of usefulness as an exponent of the pure esprit gaulois, to use a phrase which has been
tediously abused by French writers, but which is expressive of a real fact in French history and French literature. It
had been suppled and pointed: it remained for it to be weighted, strengthened, and enriched. This was not the appointed
task of Marot and his contemporaries, but of the men who came after them. But what they themselves had to do they did,
and did it well. To this day the lighter verse of France is more an echo of Clément Marot than of any other man who
lived before the seventeenth century, and, with the exception of his greater follower, La Fontaine, of any man who came
after him at any time177.

165De Belges, though the less usual, is the more accurate form. We are at
length promised a complete edition of him in the admirable series of the Belgian Academy, one of the best in appearance
and editing, and by far the cheapest of all such series. He was born in 1475, held posts in the household of the
Governors of the Netherlands, was historiographer to Louis XII., and died either in 1524 or in 1548.

166 See Poètes Français, i. 532. It is perhaps well to say that M. C.
d'Héricault, though a very agreeable as well as a very learned writer, is particularly open to the charge that his
geese are swans.

168 See Poètes Français, vol. i. ad fin., for the poets mentioned
in this paragraph and others of their kind.

169 He was in his old age conspicuous among the enemies of Étienne Dolet. See
Étienne Dolet, by R. C. Christie. London, 1880.

170 Ed Jannet et C. d'Héricault. 4 vols. Paris, 2nd ed. 1873. M. d'Héricault has
prefixed a much larger study of Marot than is to be found here to his edition of the 'beauties' of the poet, published
by Messrs. Garnier. The late M. Guiffrey published two volumes of a costly and splendid edition, which his death
interrupted.

171 The blason (description) was a child of the mediaeval dit.
Marot's examples, Le beau Tétin and Le laid Tétin, were copied ad infinitum. The first is
panegyric, the second abuse.

176 This great collection, which awaits its completion of glossary, etc., was
published between 1855 and 1878, and is invaluable to any one desiring to appreciate the general characteristics of the
poetical literature of the time.

177 Much help has been received in the writing of this chapter, and indeed of this
book, from the excellent work of MM. Hatzfeld and Darmesteter, Le Seizième Siècle en France (Paris, 1878), one
of the best histories extant in a small compass of a brief but important period of literature. We may hope for a still
more elaborate study of the same subject in English from Mr. Arthur Tilley, of King's College, Cambridge. An
introductory volume to this study appeared in 1885.